They are taken out of the
H?tel-de-Ville, led to the marketplace, and there forthwith, under
the dictation of the uproar which establishes prices, they, like
simple clerks, proclaim the reduction. When, moreover, the armed
rabble of a village marches forth to tyrannize over a neighboring
market, it carries its mayor along with it in spite of himself, as
an official instrument which belongs to it.[25] "There is no
resistance against force," writes the mayor of Vert-le-Petit; "we
had to set forth immediately." - " They assured me," says the
Mayor of Fontenay, "that, if I did not obey them, they would hang
me." - On any municipal officer hazarding a remonstrance, they
tell him that "he is getting to be an aristocrat." Aristocrat and
hung, the argument is irresistible, and all the more so because it
is actually applied. At Corbeil, the procureur-syndic who tries to
enforce the law is almost beaten to death, and three houses in which
they try to find him are demolished. At Montlh?ry, a seed merchant,
accused of mixing the flour of beans (twice as dear) with wheaten
flour, is massacred in his own house.
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